It Would Be, It Would Be So NiceAt work we employ a fair number of temporary staff, many of them Ozzies doing the grand tour of Europe. In the past year, they've backpacked to places I've hardly even heard of and can just about pronounce. My would-be cosmopolitan life, on the other hand, and apart from a jaunt to Berlin, has become so London-centric that the odd dirty weekend in Brighton is my sole excursion outside Zone Two. And, let's face it, I only go there because I can be back home on the Thameslink in fifty minutes.

So I think I should follow their example and take a trip. Not one of those European city breaks where you end up doing everything you'd normally be doing in London, only with a different accent and better food. What I need is a proper holiday, the kind with sun, sea and sand, plus a Shirley-Valentine romance to take my mind off the melanoma. The last one I had (proper holiday not romance) was a whole five years ago. Back then, I took a month out to do the whole of Australia, and, adventurous Crocodile Dundee that I am, got no further than the boyz on Bondi Beach. It did me the world of good though, and, on my return, friends remarked how rested, laid-back and happy I seemed to be. Why, it was weeks before the next hissy fit on Old Compton Street.

However, as my acquaintance with my own country is woefully inadequate, perhaps I should explore closer to home. I've never been surfing in Cornwall, gone bonkers in Brontë Country, or indulged in pagan practices at Stonehenge. I spent a whole week in Margate one afternoon, though, but it rained and was half-day closing anyway.

Any ideas? I need somewhere quiet and idyllic, a place where nothing much ever happens and nobody knows my name; where I can soak up for a few days what's left of our summer, while sipping an ice-cold Pimms on the beach, reading Proust and Jackie Collins undisturbed.